Another Year of Portland Streetcar Adventures - 2016 Roundup

Time for my annual roundup of memorable adventures on the job with Portland Streetcar. These are some of the things I experienced and observed in 2016. . . . 

Feb. 18:  There were a couple of dicey-looking characters when I got on the streetcar at 12:30. But one went digging around in his billfold and pulled out a couple of ragged but unused Trimet tickets, by which I gathered he was offering one for his companion as well. I took them and punched them in the validator.

When he finally gathered that a rider is supposed to validate a Trimet ticket with today's date in order to have valid fare, he said he'd been carrying around 20 or more of them that his P.O. (probation officer) had been handing out to him month after month. That’s good, I said; now you have a lot of future rides paid for -- just make sure you punch one each time so you don’t get caught and fined. Oh, I don’t need ’em all, he replied; I’ll give ’em away to other folks.

Even better, I said.

Feb. 29:  “I don't know if anybody’s going to be back for this, but I found it in the C section” of the streetcar, I said as I handed the operator an African-American Barbie doll that was missing a leg. . . .

March 3:  Oh my god. An obviously visually impaired woman boarded the streetcar with a handsome service dog in full harness -- a yellow lab -- and another woman wandered over to admire and compliment it . . . and proceeded to GIVE IT COMMANDS!

“Sit!” she said. Of course the highly trained animal ignored this stranger. So she said it again, whereupon I swiftly stepped forward and murmured, “Don’t give orders to other people’s dogs.”

March 7: The young woman hefted what was obviously a bass violin, in a cloth case with a wheel on the bottom, onto the streetcar. “Sorry,” I said to her, “no ukuleles allowed,” which elicited a tight, tiny grin.

March 25: “ . . . you are required to allow me to kill you in your brain while you are asleep.”

Somebody actually just said that to me. Wow.

It was a homeless guy -- tall, dark, lean, fairly young, rather handsome -- who I was more nervous about before he started talking to me, frankly. He had crossed the traffic island I was stationed on and muttered something aggressive before continuing across the street, going away . . . and then returned to loiter at the other side of my island. He was wearing a fairly tight midi skirt over his dark trousers and carrying a shopping bag and small kid’s backpack that had the design of a grey furry animal on it.
There’s a large, airy sculpture/structure in the middle of this traffic island, and for the next 15 minutes or so I maneuvered subtly to keep it between us, partly so he would be less likely to catch my eye, see me watching him, or notice me consulting my electronic tablet and come over to steal it. I could have ridden a train away, but I also wanted to make sure he didn’t hassle any of our patrons or passersby. He sat and stood around, smoked a cigarette, and finally ambled over to engage in conversation about how are homeless people going to get around if they have no money for fare, and what did I think about the lack of jobs? He spoke reasonably and well, said he appreciated my listening to him, and it only got weird toward the end when he said now that he had implanted these questions in my brain, and I had no logical answer to them, they would kill me. He was going to kill me in my sleep. He wouldn’t kill me when we're awake because that would not be “kosher” -- that was his word -- but . . . the climax and his final words to me were those above, before he left the traffic island.

April 8:  Working the streetcar this morning, I saw a young couple sitting in a pair of seats about to take a selfie. So I leaned in from above and behind them, declared “photo bomb!” and placed a goofy face under a streetcar cap in the frame. They laughed and loved it.

May 4:  Doing customer service aboard Portland Streetcar is a form of improv performance: from bemused tourists to passed-out vagrants and sullen skateboarders, I have to make constant, split-second decisions on how to handle people.

For instance, yesterday afternoon, when a trio of older women -- wildly divergent in age and racial background but clearly together -- came on board, I automatically chose to address them as “girls” and all of us thought nothing of it:

Me: Hi, girls! May I see your proof of valid fare?

Blonde with a pronounced Southern accent: Oh my goodness, where yew been the last two years?

Me: There’s only so much of me to go around.

May 6: I had already run into the cute and feisty child, seven or eight years old, and her mother on the west side earlier today. She had faked a crying spell when her mother teasingly announced that she would get a coffee for herself at the OHSU Starbucks and a water for her girl.

Now they were riding a different streetcar up the east side. What happens if you don’t have fare, she asked me. I leaned down very close to her and said in a smooth, low voice: “We get very tough with you.” Do you throw people off the train, she persisted. “We might,” I replied, mysteriously. “You never know.”

And glided away, down the aisle.

May 19:  “Picasso” has been excluded from riding the Portland Streetcar.

During a four-hour shift today, I saw a homeless man coming to board my train at the Walgreen's platform at NE Grand and Weidler. I recognized him as the same tall, handsome young man who had told me “…you are required to allow me to kill you in your brain while you are asleep” back on March 25. This afternoon he was dragging an array of bags, a small wooden painting frame, and several paint brushes and bottles of paint that he kept dropping.

I had planned to get off at that stop to grab a bite, but I decided I’d better stay on to keep an eye on him. I did my “may I see your proof of fare” routine and he started digging around for money. We’re not supposed to take money from anyone, but I wanted to be able to give him a fare ticket and make him legit in case other riders got skeptical or hostile, so I decided I’d take the dollars he was digging out. He handed me one, but none of the others, then claimed he had a weeklong Trimet pass -- keeping up a running commentary that was half lucid and half about how he didn’t like to be known by “John Wesley” because he was not the founder of Methodism or his son, mentions of a past heroin addiction and problems with his father, and more recent trouble when he had stayed under the 405 bridge near the 24-Hour Fitness in the Pearl.

Eventually he pulled out a Trimet ticket that was so defaced and blurry I couldn't possibly make out the date, but he’d made a good-faith effort so I pretended it was acceptable. Where’s your destination, I hinted pointedly, and he said “the next one”: NW 10th and Northrup. After I’d helped him off, the operator told me he rides that stretch every day, and her colleagues call him “Picasso” because he paints the interior of the train with blue oil paint so they have to call maintenance to clean it up every time. I’d kept him busy talking while he was riding, so he didn’t get to do his art on that one, but I saw him again at the 11th and Couch platform an hour later, when the operator of that train insisted he would not be allowed to ride with us (it’s ultimately the operator’s call, not mine), and I heard later in the afternoon that the Portland Streetcar enforcement officer had written him an exclusion ticket.

I’m sure I’ll see him again sometime.

May 26: Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to yell “STELLA!!!” at the top of my lungs aboard streetcar 002. True, it jolted all the riders and got their attention for what was about to take place, but it also scared the crap out of my supervisor and the train operator.

It was only after we had gotten off the train that my supervisor said “That was awesome!”

May 27:  I did my Stanley Kowalski impression this afternoon while the 002 streetcar named “Desire” was crossing the Broadway Bridge. (Rumor has it that it was caught on video.)

The winner of today’s tickets to see the production at Portland Center Stage was a young woman who appeared to be of East Indian or Pakistani background, and was not familiar with the play, so she didn’t get the “STELLA!!!” reference which startled all the riders on board. But I’m glad our random selection procedure dictated that she would win.

June 27:  Early in this afternoon’s shift on the streetcar, I found a pair of plastic autumn leaves -- attached to each other by a stem -- on the very last seat of the train. I slipped them through the strap of my baseball cap so they would hang from the back of my head while I continued my rounds.

A while and several train changes later, while I was checking fares a young woman asked, “Did you find that on the streetcar? It was on my purse here!” I was delighted to sweep my cap off my head and allow her to pluck her red, yellow, and orange leaves and return them to their rightful place.

July 17: As happens so often on my streetcar shifts, this afternoon after I announced to a carload that I wished to see their proof of valid fare, a man commented, “We were just talking about how they never check fares on the streetcar.”

“That’s absolutely right,” I said. “We NEVER do.”

July 22: I got out of an audition in southeast and reached the A Loop streetcar platform at SE MLK and Mill around 1:30 for the ride home. Scott, the operator, waved at me from the cab of the arriving train and asked if I could assist an elderly gentlemen to get to OHSU; someone had given him a bum steer at Central Library and he’d ridden the long way around NW and NE Portland to get to this point.

I wasn’t on duty with streetcar -- was inappropriately dressed in black from neck to toe for the audition, in fact -- but it was on my way home, so I was happy to accede. Before we got to the transfer point on the west side of Tilikum, I had learned my new friend was a veteran of the 82nd Airborne, had jumped into Normandy the night before D-Day, been wounded in Operation Market Garden jumping at Nijmegen, Holland, been awarded a Silver Star, and had just turned 95. “You don’t look a day over 75,” I told him, sincerely, though he had a cane and only two fingers and a thumb on his left hand.

Turned out he was NOT going to OHSU, but his two-year home at the Mirabella, which is still on my way home, so I walked him the last three blocks, and learned he had grown up in St. Johns (after his Navy Dad brought the family from Baltimore when my new friend was 4), had sold films for Republic Pictures until TV killed that industry in 1960, had a second career selling tractor trailers, and had two sons who are already retired but have lots of grandchildren.

It was a lovely trip home.

Aug. 25: I noticed a streetcar rider had a stuffed plushy skunk tucked next to her on the seat, so I asked why she didn't keep that “vicious critter” in an animal carrier. She thought that was a great idea.

Aug. 29:  If I’m standing on a streetcar platform in my work gear, people often want to show me their fare ticket or transit pass right there and “get it taken care of.” But I pretty much have to ask them to take it out again on board because it’s important for everyone else to see that I’m checking every rider on the train. It’s a kind of performance.

So today I thought of a new way to get that point across. "You need to have it handy after we get on board because I'm going to ask to see it there. Otherwise, everyone will know we're best buds."

Sept. 23:  Well, that was a new one…

-- Do you have proof of valid fare?

-- I’m not sure; I just got out of brain surgery and I’m heading back to the shelter. They gave me something...

Sure enough, the rather unfocused man with a few wayward teeth in his mouth found a Trimet ticket for today in his stack of cards. It was expired (good 'til 10:07am and my watch said 11:25), but it had today’s date, and his story was good and convincing, so I sent him on his way with my good wishes.

Sept. 29:  Carole had texted me which streetcar she was on, and also that there was a “drunk vagrant” on board. It was a fairly crowded train. Turned out to be TWO intoxicated and fragrant fellows whom I persuaded to step off the train immediately, much to their neighbors’ satisfaction.

Then I sneaked up behind my seated wife, swung around a pole, and planted a kiss on her forehead. The woman sitting next to her immediately pointed to her cheek with a forefinger, insisting that she receive a peck as well. Turned out to be a member of the faculty at Linfield College of Nursing who has supervised my standardized patient work there for the past three years.

Oct. 15:  Another sterling moment in the Annals of Mr. Streetcar!

This morning about 11 a.m., Carole and I had just eaten breakfast at Daily Feast and picked up a prescription at Safeway, and were walking south on SW 10th to the PSU Farmers Market when we encountered a strange sight at Clay. Initially, it appeared as if street construction had dug and filled a trench up the middle of Clay starting at the intersection and heading west all the way to 11th, but I quickly realized an entire load of rocks and mud had simply been dumped, starting with a substantial pile in the middle of the intersection and trailing west on Clay. A full two blocks west, I could make out a dump truck pulled over at 12th with its flashers going.

Much of the load was pebbles and mud, but some of the rocks were as big as four or five inches in diameter. A streetcar was stopped at the platform just south of the intersection, trying to assess whether it could cross safely. Automobiles were either gingerly rolling through the flotsam on 10th or edging around it on Clay.

Leaving our bags with Carole on the corner, I stepped out into the intersection to push the rocks and mud off the tracks. My shoes got covered with mud, but they were all-weather wear. Some of the medium-sized pebbles had fallen into the rut of the rails, so I sacrificed my left hand to dig them and the mud out. Soon, two other passersby joined me, and the streetcar operator, who had radioed in the news, then locked the cabin, came out with a metal rod to dig out the ruts.

He recognized me and said, “What timing! You’re everywhere!” So I did a little musical superhero flourish: “Dun da-DAHH!”

A little later, on the way home, another operator said when he sees me out and about, he often thinks “Didn’t he just get off over…?” I told him: “I didn’t want anyone to know I’d cornered the secret of cloning.”

Oct. 26:  So I was doing a fare survey downtown about 7:30, heading north on the NS, when a woman told me the on-board fare machine had eaten her $5 bill and failed to give her a ticket. I gave her a validated ticket and told her she could call our office for a refund.

It wasn't until a couple of stops later that I was able to inform the driver of the busted fare machine, which he radioed in. Fortunately, we were rounding the corner at NW 10th and Northrup, so a maintenance tech boarded a couple of stops later and went to work on the machine. He pulled out the folded $5 bill and asked me if the rider was still on the train.

I doubted she was, but I went to the far end of the train and found her! Instant refund!

Dec. 30:  It was not quite noon when I stopped by the Portland Streetcar office for a rest stop and to warm up after several hours outdoors while conducting a survey of businesses along the alignments, and a sweet elderly woman was purchasing streetcar passes at the front desk.

She immediately recognized me as the guy “who asks to see our fares,” and then requested a hug because the husband of one of her best friends had just passed away after 60 years of marriage. “I’ve had a glass of wine, and I’m a little stupid,” she admitted.

I obliged on the instant, and added “no extra charge.”

2017 POSTSCRIPT: I happened to be in the office a couple weeks later when the lady from Dec. 30 showed up with a tiny pot of flowers, plopped it on the front desk, pointed to the receptionist and me, and said, “These are for you and you!”

Who says this job doesn't have any benefits?